Sunday at 9 p.m.

At about 9 p.m. on a recent, stressful Sunday evening, which came
on the heels of a stressful weekend, which came on the heels of a stressful
week, I turned to my wife and asked, “How am I doing at being emotionally
available to you and practically responsive to the needs of our home?”

If only. In fact, on that Sunday evening, I was nowhere near
asking that question.

But if I had, I arguably would have been on the cusp of posing a
powerful question with implications far beyond a worn-out Sunday evening.

Not long after the weekend in question, I happened upon a
treatise on St. Joseph by Pope John Paul II in which he states that Joseph
models for us the “ideal harmony” between the “contemplative” and “active”
life. Joseph holds the tension between the two perfectly. He is a man of
profound prayer and at the same time 100 percent available to the Blessed
Virgin Mary. He is the deepest guy you’d ever meet and he ably fulfills all of
the necessitas caritatis— “the (practical)
demands of love” — of the Holy Family. Joseph could have asked that question I
never asked — and gotten a great response.

Sunday at 9 p.m. is not always a fun time. For us idealists, it’s
also when the sweeping grandeur and “great things” of what “could have been” of
the weekend meets the reality of the fast-approaching Monday. We sometimes go a
little “contemplative” in our heads, and become sullen, irritable or grumpy on
the outside. Perhaps we are not all that emotionally available to those
entrusted to us. It can be a hard hour to put the“caritas”
into the “necessitas.”

But whether we’re an idealist or not, perhaps the time has come
to let Joseph smack us upside the head with one of his two-by-fours and teach
us how to conduct and evaluate our Sunday evenings.

“St. Joseph,” Pope Paul VI observed, “is proof that in order to
be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things — it
is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be
true and authentic.”

Let us translate from blessed pope language to weary husband
language: “Honey, how am I doing on the common, simple, human things?” we might
ask on a Sunday evening.

Our spouse might race in her mind’s eye through a list of common,
simple, human household things like lunches, laundry, dishes, toilets, bills
and repairs, which is exactly the kind of necessitas
caritatis thinking required on a Sunday evening as we prepare to launch
our family into the week.

But if by “common, simple,” and “human,” we only think of dishes
and laundry, we err greatly. “Through his complete self-sacrifice,” John Paul
II observes, “Joseph expressed his generous love for the Mother of God, and
gave her a husband’s ‘gift of self.’”

“Complete” means truly present and attentive, a “gift of self” to
our wife.

“A central measure of his manhood,” claims Christendom philosophy
professor John Cuddeback about husbands, is “the quality of his presence in the
home.” This metric needs to be wrested from the prevailing culture, in which we
guys are so prone to measure manhood only by what we accomplish outside the
home.

Cuddeback continues, “A critical feature of a man’s presence in
the home is that it begins with his presence to his wife.”

We know that Joseph was available emotionally to Mary and
practically responsive to the needs of the home. Every husband who is not (yet)
likewise available and responsive can take some solace in the fact that Joseph
was not given this ability and “ideal harmony” via miracle but rather through
quiet, hard work, prayer, and grace.

There are a lot of broken things in our culture and in our lives.
Looking to Joseph and imploring his intercession, every husband and father can
begin to fix this not through “great things” but by patient, common, and simple
advances in that most human of times and places: 9 p.m. on a Sunday in his
home.